In Memoriam

Anna Shaw Benjamin

Anna Shaw Benjamin died on July 21, 2013. She came to Rutgers University in 1964 as a professor in the Department of Classics and retired in 1987. During her years at Rutgers she served at various times as chair and/or director of graduate studies. She also created an archeology program within the Department of Classics.

During her career at Rutgers, Professor Benjamin spent most of her summers at digs in Greece and Turkey, and particularly worked with colleagues at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. She was a dedicated educator who served the university in many capacities including as representative to an international conference in Israel, as a university senator, as president of the AAUP (1986), as an active member of the Douglass Faculty Council, as a liaison with classics teachers in New Jersey, and as a mentor to many students.

Throughout her long and distinguished career at Rutgers, she received a number of honors for her scholarly work. In 1966-67 she was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1972 she was appointed editor of Archeology for a five-year term. She devoted her considerable skills to expanding the content and breadth of the journal. In that era the editor was unpaid, but for Professor Benjamin it was a labor of love for a field to which she was wholly committed.

In 1979 Professor Benjamin was inducted as a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. In 1994 she received the Martha & Artemis Joukowsky Distinguished Service Award from the Archeological Institute of America. Those two honors recognized her contributions to both the fields of classics and archeology and were particularly important to her as they reflected her life’s work.